


Homo Halcyonis

by Bonymaloney



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Biting, Captivity, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Facial Shaving, Hair Washing, Kinktober 2020, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Oral Sex, Pegging, Rough Sex, Sex Pollen, Weird Biology, Wet Dream, its what it sounds like, raptimillian desoto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:13:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27317563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonymaloney/pseuds/Bonymaloney
Summary: After they free Phineas and overthrow the Board, Max asks the Captain to marry him. She turns him down, and he finds himself adrift with no Equation to solve and no one left to fight. When a team of chimerists trying to solve the Halcyon crisis put the call out for volunteers, Max feels he might have found the purpose he was looking for. Adaptation is survival, but at what point will he become more rapt than man?Halloween AU that takes place during my Fighting It At Every Turn series.
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Comments: 14
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

_The Vicar Maximillian DeSoto renounced his faith and joined the effort to rebuild the colony. Ironically, he finally found the joy that had eluded him over the course of his life, and realized that perhaps he was always meant to be just a simple laborer after all._

Max quickly dismissed the idea - it was absurd. He had always been certain he had a destiny and now, unshackled from the Plan, he was finally free to pursue it. Without bowing to any man made system of control, it remained only to determine what his destiny might be. 

News from Roseway gave him his answer. Max had approved of Dr Chartrand and her team; their embrace of the human ability to adapt, their uncompromising willingness to sacrifice. Without need for secrecy, now that the entire colony knew of the threat that the complacency and greed of the Board had kept hidden, the chimerists had re-established themselves in the laboratories of Roseway; and they were looking for volunteers. 

Max was a trained scientist and a colonial patriot. But beyond the purely intellectual, the idea appealed to him on a spiritual level. Scienticians believed that after death, the body’s component atoms returned to the Equation ready to play their part in its next line. Without that faith to fall back on, Max felt the need to leave a legacy. He was tall and well formed, intelligent, resourceful. The new humans of Halcyon could do far worse than having a little DeSoto in them. He lay by his fire gazing up at the stars, and thought about everything he was, and everything he had wanted to be. When sleep eventually took him, he dreamed of a creature with orange eyes and huge teeth standing over him. Acid dropped from its maw, but it didn’t attack him. It merely watched, and waited. 

The next morning he scorned at himself. Roseway was the first place he had seen a living raptidon, and while they were far more numerous on Monarch, they had clearly left an impression upon him. Dismissing the dream, he booked passage on a shuttle, and presented himself at the gates of the complex with no more than a hint of trepidation. After Tartarus and Scylla and Chaney, he had learned that destiny rarely resolved itself in a single moment. The Captain had been the exception that proved the rule - but Max shoved the image of the Captain out of his mind as he strode into the lab. 

Every day his temperature was recorded, he breathed into a tube that calculated his metabolism, and they took samples of the cells inside his cheek. There were other people in the lab going through the same thing, but Max wasn’t allowed to know exactly what treatments they had received. It would be a confounding variable, the labcoat said, which Max was forced to concede was true. It was mere scientific curiosity, irrelevant in the long run. His own nuclein was superior, that much was surely a given.

There were other, more subjective questions. His vision, his sense of taste, how he was sleeping. And truth be told his sleep had been suffering. Max put it down to the relative idleness of his situation. When not required for the experiments, his time was his own; and yet there were only so many times a man could walk the walls of Roseway and still maintain his sanity. One thing to be said for a life of labour was that it lead to restful nights. 

Of raptidons there were no sign. 

Troubled sleep aside, Max was living like the chairman. He ate cacow ribs and boarst and crispy, salty cysty chops. No expense was spared for those undertaking the great work of solving the Halcyon crisis. There were piles of nanners and mockapples with every meal as well, but they looked rather unappealing, and Max supposed they’d been sitting in storage for too long. Regardless, whether he had received an active treatment or a placebo or whether it was all nonsense that Welles and Chartrand had cooked up between them, he felt better than he had since before Tartarus - the first time in Tartarus. He thought it must be because he had a purpose once more. 

That night the silvery moonlight seemed to fall directly onto his eyelids, and in the end he threw his covers aside, biting back a curse word as he hopped into his trousers. He prowled along a corridor that seemed never ending, until he eventually found his way into the warm Roseway night. Max had originally intended to head for the 17th Bar and nurse a finger of whiskey until he felt like sleep; but now the thought of the liquor oddly turned his stomach. The lights of the town were too bright, the people too irritating. He felt his hackles rising at the sound of two young guards crossing the plaza. Their laughter, their breathing, even their pulses were noisy. 

Outside the walls Max felt his spirit lift. The roadway was smooth under his feet, the stars bright, the night cool and clear. He was energised, ready to fight or fuck all of Halcyon, and something inside him urged him to run. Striding into the dark inviting forest, it didn’t seem strange to him that sometimes he ran on all fours. There was a trooper on patrol a little way ahead of him, and Max leapt onto his back without breaking his stride. The smell of the man’s fear and the way he struggled beneath him were deeply erotic. He felt very tender and ardent as his teeth closed on his shoulder, soothing his mate even as he tore into him, and then somehow they were both naked, rutting and rolling in the moonlight and -

And Max sat up in bed, gasping, his muscles stiff and sore. He’d come in his bedclothes, he realised with irritation, something that hadn’t happened since he was a seminarian. He peeled himself out of his shorts and wrapped a towel around his waist. A vivid dream, he mused in the shower, doubtless brought on by the strangeness of his circumstances; but that couldn’t be helped. Adaptation was survival, and who better than Maximillian DeSoto to help the colony survive. He was in a good mood, and ravenous as he made his way down to breakfast, ready for the next round of testing to begin. 

The dreams persisted; and sometimes Max wondered whether he ought to be reporting them as a side effect. But they were a combination of intimately personal and incomprehensible to anyone but him; and so he kept his silence. During the days he ate, read and exercised; attended the laboratory when he was required. 

He dreamed he followed a research assistant along the corridor to the lab, dimly lit and deserted during the night cycle. She pushed him back onto one of the steel tables, and for a moment he felt fear, but then without ceremony she pulled his pants down and straddled him, riding his stiff eager cock. The scent of her was overwhelming and he growled. Sitting up to face her he bit at her shoulder and her throat, wrapped one hand in her hair and clasped the other to her hip so that he could rut up into her and give her his seed.

He stumbled upon a nest of sprats, and ate them raw, his body thriving on the iron and the protein even as his mind recoiled - he wasn’t fond of sprat at the best of times, let alone still squeaking.

He chased a green-clad scientist along the roadway. Max was light hearted with the clear path beneath his feet and the moons and stars glowing above him. The chase thrilled him and he was full of love for his prey. He followed him past a low slung maintenance shed and under an archway, and then the man was gone. Max searched for him for a while; but when the hunt proved fruitless he lay back down. 

The beds in Roseway had proven more than adequate; and yet when Max awoke he was cold and stiff, lying on muddy ground. He looked around and saw rocks and steel and concrete walls, and then realised to his outrage and horror that he was in the raptidon pen.


	2. Chapter 2

When he was a small boy, Max had been taken to see a travelling exhibition, where the fiercest and strangest wildlife of the colony was put on display. As he paced the walls of the pen, systematically examining them for a means of escape, he suddenly remembered the mindless way the animals had prowled inside their cages. Humiliated, he moved into the centre of the pen. A camera tracked his movement, and he swore at it. He settled himself on a rock and tried to meditate, but eventually the exposure grew too much to bear, and he withdrew to shelter beneath the overhanging walkways that lined the walls, where he could ruminate undisturbed. 

The injustice of it burned - he’d done nothing more than his duty. Adaptation was survival, that was true of all things; and if Max could contribute to the survival of the colony then that would be no small thing, now that the Equation was forever beyond his reach. But they had warped his nuclein, and while he’d gained the ability to thrive by eating the native flora and fauna, he’d lost something more. His control, the thing he prided himself on, that he’d defined himself by for so long...

Something treacherous stirred at the back of his mind. _That’s why it feels so good._

His head hurt, and he had to consider whether it was a tension headache or whether he might be about to grow a crest of scaly spines. Miserable, he curled up on his side. The thought haunted him that he was curling up like an animal, rather than because he was used to stowing his long body in his cramped bunk on the Unreliable; but eventually, as the sun set, he slept. He dreamed he was in the Labyrinth, a nightmare like he hadn’t had in a while. He was in the panopticon, in the Pit; and he was watching himself from outside as though it were a serial drama.

He was woken by the sound of the enclosure door sliding shut. Max tensed as footsteps approached, coming ever closer. He could smell her - his Captain, his lover, his _mate_ , and he was numb with lust. He stalked towards her, drawn by an invisible, irresistible force. His desire was spiked by fear; fear that he might hurt her, fear of disgracing himself in front of the great scientific minds of the colony; and to Max’s shame he couldn’t tell which prospect was worse.

Whatever happened next, Max knew that he needed privacy. For his lust to be recorded, studied, discussed... the humiliation was unbearable. He reached out his hand, warding her off and beckoning to her with equal fervour. He wasn’t himself, he wasn’t in _control_ ; he should ask the Captain to leave, to spare whatever last remaining shreds of dignity remained to him. That was the rational part of him, that was rapidly being drowned out by the roaring of his want. The Captain was tall, with long limbs, ripe curves, dark glossy hair like the stars at night... strong and sleek, and he longed to make her his own. To drag her to his lair, to feel the wet heat of her cunt and the iron of her blood on his lips as she submitted to his dominance. He tried to fight the urges down, to protect himself and her, but his feet carried him towards her like a man possessed

“Captain... they are watching us. Please...”

His voice was hoarse and it was strangely hard to form words, but she understood. She took his hand in her own and came to him, her eyes dark and soft with that compassion that he’d seen her show so often to those who were struggling and helpless. He guided her to the spot he’d found under the walkway, shielded from the rest of the enclosure by some tall rocks. His den, he thought with a mixture of shame and triumph.

He pushed her to the ground and mounted her. The scent of her hair and the flicker of her pulse against his tongue were so deliciously intimate, and his heart roared with triumph as he bit and bit and she writhed and groaned in pain. But even so, the small rational part of him that was still fighting a valiant rearguard action warned him, it was too easy…

He felt something sharp against his leg, and she was looking at him with genuine tenderness. 

“I’m sorry, Max,” she murmured; and then cold flooded through him. He felt blissfully relaxed, and his eyes slipped shut. The last thing he knew was her hand, gently grooming through his hair.


	3. Chapter 3

Max’s consciousness came in like a slow tide. He was aware of warmth and darkness, a feeling of safety. The scent of the Captain, soothing and exciting in equal measure. He stretched and sighed, relishing the comfort until his higher functions began to return and he remembered. The Halcyon crisis, the experiments, Roseway…

Opening his eyes, he found he was in bed in the Captain’s cabin. The Captain herself was leaning back in her chair with her legs crossed, watching him. There was a smile on her face and a large pistol in her hand. It wasn’t pointed at him, but it wasn’t not pointed at him. Pearl was a woman who had appeared from nowhere and made the entire colony her territory. And now he was in her den and in her power.

Max shivered with lust, but he forced himself to focus, to remain present. He became aware of a weight around his ankle, and as he sat up and swung his legs out of bed he saw a cuff securely locked in place, with a chain tethering him to the solid frame of the bunk. By his estimate it would allow him enough play to move around the cabin, but not to approach the door. Outraged, he stared up at Pearl. She dangled a set of keys from her fingers, let them jingle slightly. The gesture was teasing, but her eyes were sad. 

“You’re keeping me in shackles?” He demanded, his rage only enhanced by the part of his subconscious that wanted to lower his crest as a gesture of submission. 

“One shackle. And if you can promise me you’re not gonna go out and sniff the crew’s butts, I’ll let you free.”

“I’m not a fucking canid,” he mumbled, frowning, but he had no choice but to acknowledge her point. 

“You’re not a raptidon either,” she replied with determination. “So I’m not gonna let you do anything you’d regret once we get you back to normal.”

“May I ask how you plan to achieve that?”

“We’re headed to the orbital lab. Chatrand and a hand-picked team are gonna meet us there. I promised her all the data would be hers - fully anonymised of course - if she keeps this on the DL. So it’s a win-win. Her team gets sole scientific credit, and I don’t have to kill her.”

She sat beside him on the bed and took his hand. “They wanted me to help catch you so they could treat you like some sort of experiment. That’s not happening to my crew.” Her hand was cool on the nape of his neck, her forehead pressed against his. “Especially not my Vicar. It’s gonna be ok, Max.” She kissed him, and then she was gone. 

It was bearable. Perhaps that was the most humiliating part of it all, how bearable it was. Pearl brought him his books and meditation aids, his favourite soap and hair oil, and the bar cart was well stocked with Iceberg Aged. She had the camp bed brought up from the hold, and insisted on sleeping in it herself.

“It would be weird otherwise,” she explained. “Like you were some sort of pet.” He couldn’t help but notice that the camp bed was between him and the door, and that the heavy pistol was never far from her side. 

He would sit on the edge of his bunk reading aloud to her, and she would lie on her bed making fun of him, and it was almost like old times. But his brain was full of sweet memories of the other things they might be doing if it were still old times, and the things the rapt-him wanted to do to her now. He would pace the cabin, testing the furthest reaches of his chain, and the Captain would stand just outside them, watching him sadly. Max could still see the bruises he’d bitten into her neck, and they maddened him. 

it was a night like any other, about two thirds of the way into the journey, and Max dreamed he was awake. The cabin was dim, the stars outside cold. The Captain was crouching by his bunk, watching him, studying him. 

“Why did you do it, Max?” Her voice was soft and husky, a caress that made the back of his neck prickle. 

His tongue and his mind felt heavy, numbed by her closeness as he tried to explain. 

“After Scylla… my entire life, I was so sure there was something I was meant to be. And then after Scylla, there was nothing, until I heard about the research. I didn’t want to turn into… this… but without a destiny, I have nothing. I _am_ nothing.”

Pearl’s eyes were dark and liquid with sorrow. 

“I don’t… you’re everything, Max.”

She grasped his outstretched hand, and he drew her into the bunk. The scent of her, the _heat_ of her… she was irresistible and he was relentless, and as he moved on top of her she arched, welcoming him and urging him on.

When he awoke, the cabin was empty. Pearl’s bed was neatly made, and it was as though she’d never been there at all. Max mourned, until he shook his head, grit his teeth and scowled. He was behaving ridiculously. The Captain was keeping herself from him because he was not in his right mind, and she believed he would be shamed by his actions. She was about her business, and she would eventually return. He scratched at the skin beneath his ankle cuff, until he realised what he was doing and snatched his hand away, biting back a curse.

When the Captain did return, she stood just beyond the reach of his chain, staring down at him with an awkward grin. Her posture was stiff, and she avoided meeting his eye. 

“What?” he snapped, grabbing the closest book from the floor and opening it across his lap as though he’d been interrupted in studying. 

Pearl took a deep breath and brushed the loose strands of hair back from her face. “There’s no easy way to say this… Max, you smell.”

“What - what the Void do you mean by that!” 

“I mean, you smell bad,” she clarified, helpfully. 

“Well if you’d let me have a proper fucking shower I could do something about it!” He snarled to hide his anxiety. He’d flattered himself he was maintaining his standards rather well, sponging himself down at the Captain’s small en-suite sink, yet the past few nights he’d thought he’d caught a hint of something on his bedsheets, something unpleasant yet strangely familiar. 

The Captain was nothing if not fair minded, and she was forced to acknowledge his point. 

“Fine,” she said eventually. “I’ll do it.”

It wasn’t what Max had imagined. He sat shirtless and bound in the Captains’s chair, shackles around his wrists joining the one around his ankle to keep his hands secure behind his back. Pearl collected his toiletries from his cabin, and drew a porcelain basic full of hot water. 

If he truly were a raptidon, he would be purring in anticipation.


	4. Chapter 4

The gentle and self-assured way Pearl moved, the strength and precision of her warmed his heart; the way she was touching him warmed other, more insistent body parts. She wrapped a towel around his shoulder and poured water over his head. Her fingers teased through his hair; working up a lather before rinsing it clean. She caressed his chest and arms with a cloth, squeezing at his shoulders, his biceps and his calves. His favourite soap smelled sharp and clean, and every pass of her hand left his skin tingling in her wake. Her fingers groomed through his body hair and he trembled. 

She emptied and refilled the water, and when she turned to face him she was holding his razor. Precision engineered and elegantly weighted, he could feel the memory of it in his hand. The blade was lethally sharp, and Max felt his scalp tingle and his groin tighten.

Tugging on his hair to angle his head to her liking, her fingers twined in his hair in a sharp, delicious blend of pleasure and pain. She set the blade gliding across his skin, smooth and clean and millimetres away from his life’s blood. Her face was pure concentration, but he noticed her nostrils flaring, and a flush began to spread across her face. 

Pearl set the razor down on her desk and crouched in front of him, gripped his head in both hands so that he was forced to look deep into her eyes. She was staring at him, studying him, so intent it made him shiver. Her pupils were dilated, almost imperceptible against the rich dark brown of her irises, but one of his favourite things in the colony to see. 

“Captain? Are we…”

Pearl was breathing hard, and to Max’s horror, things suddenly clicked into place. 

Raptidons produced musk in order to attract a mate. The smell was disgusting to humans, and yet the substance itself contained a pheromone which, when extracted, had an extremely seductive effect. Wealthy Byzantines were willing to pay a fortune for N-rapt, synthesised from the raw material that Max was now producing in spades. He noticed the Captain’s eyes widen, the realisation hitting her at the same moment, but she leaned in and his words of warning were blissfully stifled by her kiss, and then it was too late for both of them. 

“Fuck, you smell so good,” she gasped in his ear. Her lips crushed against his as she moaned into his mouth. Hot, biting kisses down his still wet throat, his chest, his belly… he raised his hips as best he could with the heavy manacles awkward behind him, allowing her to yank his undershorts down and plunge his cock into her mouth. She was swallowing him, wet and slick and beautifully eager, and he parted his legs to allow her access. 

Max’s tastes normally ran too refined for the use of spit as lubrication, but the desperation he felt to be filled and fucked was simply too great. The burning stretch as she pushed her fingers inside him shot up his spine, electric pleasure overwhelming his senses, and he arched so hard his back hurt. His balls felt heavy and hot, his nipples achingly tender. Every inch of his skin was desperate for her touch, yearning for the pleasure that only his mate could give. 

Pearl climbed into his lap, writhing against him full of need. Max planted his feet on the ground and surged up against her, and then the Captain’s chair gave out in protest. He crashed to the ground, with the Captain herself on top of him. He was winded, and his wrists and shoulders were screaming. 

He saw her wince as she got to her feet, but the dazed expression was gone from her eyes. She knelt and released his arms from behind him, then sat on the floor beside him with a rueful grin. 

“The weird thing is, when I actually think about it, you still smell gross.”

Max laughed, a hollow sound that was equal parts desire and despair, but as Pearl laughed with him he felt warm. 

“Chain me up again, Captain. I shall endure.”

“I’m not sure I will.”

She slipped her arm around his shoulders and drew him close, her forehead against his. The gesture was intimate and so comforting that for just a moment he forgot everything except the fact that she was near him, sitting together on the hard floor, the two of them against the colony the way it had always been. But then the familiar yearning hunger rose up again at her closeness, and he felt his face heat and his stomach clench. 

“Please, Captain,” he said plaintively. Pearl had the look on her face that meant she was about to do something against her better judgement, but she was excited about it. The way she’d looked before the Alta Vitae heist; the way she’d looked before she killed Vallejos. He wondered for a thrilling second whether she might be about to kill him. 

“Is this ok? Are you ok”, she murmured, sounding as helpless with lust as he felt. He could only swallow and nod. “Tell me what you need.”

By strength, she was going to make him fucking say it. His face burned and he grit his jaw tight to hold back a howl of frustration. She was his Captain and his mate, he was hers body and spirit and he wanted, fuck, he needed...

“Fuck me,” he gasped, his voice thick with lust and shame. “Fuck me, fill me up, fucking breed me. I don’t care.”

She pushed him forward, her hand between his shoulder blades pressing him face down into the mattress. The floor was hard and cold under his knees as he spread his thighs and arched with a sudden spasm of want. Her breath was hot against his ear. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Don’t fucking stop,” he hissed. She kept him pinned as she reached beneath her bed, drew out the clasped leather case that always made him shiver in anticipation. Slick cold lube burned between his cheeks and inside him, working him open with her strong skilful fingers, and black holes but he was so desperate he thought he might scream. 

Max had spent his whole life searching for control. He’d thought to find it in the Grand Equation, proving that his actions were preordained and therefore blameless. But as he struggled and failed to resist his animal urges, he suddenly understood that he would have hated the determinism of the Plan just as badly. To consume and reproduce would have been his lot either way, and his intellect would have had no more say in the matter than it did now. Pearl had saved him from his slavish devotion to the Plan and she would save him from the rapt. She was giving him what he needed and he cried out at the stretch, and then he was full, so Void damned full as she fucked him with her thick tempered-glass cock. He gave himself up to his Captain, stifled his cries in her bunk. 

“Can you move?” She gasped after what could have been seconds or hours, her voice harsh and hot. “I want you. Maximillian.”

Max was painfully stiff, weeping pre-cum all over his thighs. She guided him on top of her, awkward and very aware of the intrusion within him. Plunging into her was overwhelming sensation and blissful relief bound up into one. He made sounds he’d never heard himself make before, biting at her shoulders and throat as he fucked her. Her fingers raked bloody stripes of lust down his back, but then she was kissing him with a passion and a sweetness that made him want to cry. The pain as he clenched around the shaft inside him mingled with the pleasure and sharpened it until he couldn’t stand it, and he sobbed with ecstasy as he spilled inside her. 

Afterwards she sat with her back against the bunk, and he rested his head in her lap. 

“Not far to go,” she murmured. “We’ll get you back.” Her fingers groomed through his hair. 

“Seriously though, Max,” she went on. “I leave you alone for a couple of months and you go get yourself turned into a raptidon. Guess we’d better get married after all.”

“What?” Still dazed with sex, it took him a moment to process the words.

“I mean it; come back to the Unreliable. You always were my favourite gunhand.” Her eyes were dark liquid pools he wanted to drown in. “We don’t need to have a destiny. We’ll have each other.”

When they reached the orbital station, Dr Welles’ old work space was a flurry of activity, confusing but clearly coordinated on a level that was only apparent to those who were a part of it. The scientists talked of molecules that would seek out specific sections of nuclein and destroy them, and would do it without themselves being destroyed; workers that never tired. Molecules that could insert entirely new nuclein into an existing cell, like the calligraphers who rewrote the official history of Halcyon every time the structure of the Board changed. His contribution would set their work forward years, if not decades, might even enable them to save the colony itself -

“Will it work?” The Captain’s voice cut across them all. There were nods and murmurs, and then Dr Chartrand stepped forward. 

“I’d stake my life on it.” 

That meant something, coming from her; and so there was no need to emphasise the fact that she was. 

“Do it then,” the Captain snapped. 

Max was lead forward, his bonds released, and before the scent of so many humans in a confined space had the chance to turn his head he was pushed into a stasis chamber. He didn’t have the energy to protest. Racked by the hunger and lust that had consumed him; he welcomed the cold and the still. His vision darkened, and the last thing he saw was Pearl’s face, watching him through the glass as he slid into darkness…


	5. Chapter 5

…moments later he stepped back out into the light, shielding his eyes. Only the slight weakness in his legs betrayed the fact that he’d been frozen for days. The mood in the lab was celebratory; and Max supposed the fact that he hadn’t liquified was indeed worthy of celebration. The assembled scientists crowded eagerly around him. He could smell macrowaved food and too many terminals whirring away in close proximity. The smell reminded his of being back in seminary, in chemistry class. He certainly felt no desire to hunt any of them. 

Pearl pushed through the crowd and stood before him. Her eyes met his and he nodded, a sudden lump in his throat rendering him unable to speak. Her arms wrapped around him and they held each other tight. 

“Are you feeling better, Mr Vicar?”

“Hey Max, how many of those corporate eggheads did you eat?”

“Welcome back, Preacher. Glad I’m not gonna have to put your head on my wall.”

“RAARGGH!”

The latter was Dr Fenhill. Max responded with a good natured “fuck you” as the crew welcomed him home. They held a feast, and he ate woolycow filet, with tobaccorn and noodles and plenty of fruit. Afterwards he retired to bed with the Captain. Too tired for sex, they curled around each other. Max’s knees and his back still hurt a little, but eventually he slept. 

He dreamed that he decided to take a late night shower, now that he was in his own space once more. The cold steel of the walkways felt pleasantly cool underfoot as he padded up the stairs along the corridor, quietly so as not to disturb his pack. He stepped into the bathroom and stood before the mirror. A pair of cold orange eyes glared back at him, and with a sick sense of resignation Max realised that he wasn’t surprised at all.


End file.
